Operation Heathrow

Chapter 2: Emergency Patch

The following morning, before Karine leaves for her day job as a licensed insolvency trustee, or LIT, she awakens to an announcement from MAA's manufacturer. The servers will be taken offline to deploy emergency patch 2.1a at 1 PM GMT. Patch notes will become available at that time.

It has always been like this when new content patches are released for MAA: the manufacturer is always in a rush to get the most important bugs fixed in the first week of a content patch's lifecycle, Karine sighs, while 1 PM GMT would mean, for her, 8 AM in her time zone. She then prays that the unrest will be quelled among the trash mobs in Upper Perseria upon returning to the game tonight.

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When 1 PM GMT arrives on Earth, in MAA's world, on the other hand, Karine's characters are having a conversation with other players' characters about the alarm Karine's bishop, Monseigneur, sounded last night. She is at a function at the Death Fiscalists' guild hall, which is a lavish palace on a tropical island, lined with decorations of varying rarity.

"Last night, I told... Karine, I think, about how what people from her world were making us do barbaric things we wouldn't have otherwise" Monseigneur gossips about what she told Karine at night, in the presence of other characters played by Death Fiscalists.

"Yeah, they made us endure what they call... wipes? Over and over" Béteulle, Ram's bard, sighs, while no player is currently online.

"And some people in their world somehow see it fit to laugh at either us tanks or at healers when wipes happen. If only people in their world actually understood the plight of ours... I saw it myself in Upper Perseria" Monseigneur harangues the bard around the guild's dinner table. "We risk everything for them, and that's how they treat us?"

Monseigneur then keeps talking about how some people patrolling Upper Perseria who, to the players' eyes, are trash mobs, demanded the people responsible for what they deem to be the massacre of innocents in Lower Perseria to be brought to justice.

Speaking of Perseria, its city council holds an emergency meeting, seeking to prevent the unrest among its residents from spreading any further.

"Mr. Mayor, this is unacceptable: riots keep erupting in Upper Perseria as they demand retribution for the repeated massacres of innocents that took place in Lower Perseria!" a city councillor representing a district in Upper Perseria makes their case. "I fear irreparable damage might be done if nothing is done to prevent further riots, or the perpetrators of the massacres in Lower Perseria aren't punished!"

"I propose that the city be put under lockdown to prevent rioting from taking place, and to protect the residents from themselves!" the mayor of Perseria opens the city council meeting, knowing that the clock is ticking on them.

The city council keeps debating various measures they feel could stem the wave of unrest among its residents, while the would-be rebels are ready to roll out measures of their own as they quietly slip out of the city for whereabouts unknown, hiding as a caravan of traveling merchants... for now.

"I say we banish people affiliated with the rioters from this city!" a city councillor vehemently suggests a course of action.

"By exiling people affiliated with the rioters, what's not to say that they can't spread the unrest elsewhere in the world? They will seek refuge in other city-states..." the mayor is concerned about the consequences of exiling the rioters and their sympathizers.

"And turn the rest of the world against us?" another concerned city councillor yells. "Just don't banish the rioter sympathizers!"

"One last thing about lockdown: the only people authorized to enter or leave their homes are food merchants and guards! Those in favor of banishing the rioters..." the mayor signals.